


The Baby Shower Job

by Siria



Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-28
Updated: 2010-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-10 20:27:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/103932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Parker," Hardison said through gritted teeth, his mouth locked in a forced smile, "you can't con the baby."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Baby Shower Job

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sheafrotherdon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/gifts).



> With many thanks to dogeared for betaing!

"Parker," Hardison said through gritted teeth, his mouth locked in a forced smile, "you can't con the baby. We will straight up go to _hell_ if you try to run a con on a _baby_." One or two of the women on the other side of the room were glancing at them curiously, and Hardison nodded at them in what he hoped was a laid-back, congenial, _nothing to see here_ kind of way.

_Hormones_, he mouthed at them, pointing surreptitiously at Parker, and felt all kinds of relieved when one of them smirked sympathetically, the other rolled her eyes, and they both turned away. "Okay," he said, "we got some kind of temporary cover from them thinking you're a crazy pregnant lady, but this is not going to last. Put down that baby and let's get out of here."

Parker didn't look at him. She was glaring at the kid she was holding at arm's length—a chubby blond six-month-old who looked like he'd come right from White Folks Central Casting—and the kid was giving as good as he got. It was kind of eerie, like watching Damien from _The Omen_ face off with Cameron from _Terminator_—and while Hardison wasn't denying that that was some intriguing crossover potential right there, it also made him want to stand far away from anything sharp or breakable.

"Parker—"

"It's a fair con," Parker told him. She deposited the kid back in the crib, took a step back and continued glaring at him. Dressed as Sophie had ordered—her hair in some kind of hipster-messy braid, 50s-style printed sundress over a fake pregnant belly, strappy flat sandals—with her hands on her newly-padded hips and a manic gleam in her eyes, she looked like a Stepford wife gone rogue. "The baby has the Fabergé egg, we need the Fabergé egg. It's not like he needs it for anything."

Hardison peered into the crib. The kid blew a spit bubble at him. "He's like six months old, Parker. He doesn't need anything right now except a fresh diaper and reruns of _Dora the Explorer_." He made a reluctant face. "Besides, it's a present to him from his Nana. Taking it from him feels kind of... you know. Wrong." In Hardison's extensive experience, Nanas were sacred. You didn't mess with Nana presents. A couple of jocks from back in his high school days had the life-long credit scores to prove it.

Parker bared her teeth at him, and Hardison felt he had no choice but to snag a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter and down it in one gulp. Say what you wanted about the Park Avenue set, but they knew how to throw a baby shower—alcohol; a string quartet working their way through Strauss' greatest hits; guests made up of low-key celebrities, old money, and a couple of politicians clever enough not to have been caught in a sex scandal yet; and no one at all interested in the kid or vulgar enough to pay any attention to the stack of wrapped presents sitting in one corner of the room. He put the empty glass back on the tray and took another full one. The waiter raised an eyebrow at him, but Hardison just nodded at Parker—whose upper lip was still curled disdainfully—and said, "Hey man, I'm drinking for two."

The waiter backed away slowly. Parker cocked her head. "Now's our chance. You distract the baby while I get the egg."

Hardison stared at her. "Distract a—how am I supposed to _distract_ a baby? It's not like it's got a high attention span at the best of times."

"Talk at it," Parker said, focusing at that same indeterminate spot over his shoulder that she always looked at when she was talking to him and didn't want to meet his eyes. "With your mouth." She marched off, back straight despite the great swell of the fake belly, blonde ponytail bouncing.

Hardison stared after her for a moment, then looked down at the baby. "That was weird, right? Y'all agree with me that was weird?"

The kid babbled at him; Hardison decided to take that as agreement, because the good Lord knew he needed all the people in his corner that he could get when it came to him and Parker. He had the sneaking suspicion that the faint hissing he could hear through his comm was Eliot laughing softly at him. He leaned over, resting his folded arms on the side of the crib. "I'm glad someone's with me on this. We got the whole pretzel agreement going on, but you know she still confuses the hell out of me sometimes."

The kid blew a raspberry.

Hardison sighed. "Ain't that the truth." He should have refused when Nate said that he and Parker could do this one solo. The man claimed to be a mastermind, but sometimes Hardison thought he was just asking for trouble. "Genius, my ass," he mumbled.

"Why are you talking about your ass to the baby?" Parker said, from right beside him. Hardison hadn't heard her walking back over to them, but he did _not_ jump. "That seems inappropriate."

"My—I was _not_ talking about my ass in front of the baby," Hardison hissed. He realised Parker's hands were empty. "You didn't get the egg? Tell me you got the egg."

"I got it," Parker said, smiling dreamily. It was a very odd expression to see on her face. She ran her hand over the swell of her fake belly. "My belly has a false bottom."

Hardison boggled—it was a quiet boggling, but it was definitely a boggling.

"Your belly has a what now?"

"Nate suggested I could use it to smuggle the egg out." Parker was still rubbing her stomach like it was a good luck charm or something. "It's a good idea. I think we should use it in cons more. I can't climb through a vent like this, though." She scrunched up her eyebrows. "Unless it was a collapsable belly. I bet we could rig one that's inflatable."

Hardison was almost certain that if he let himself think about the image that called up too closely, he would have some kind of seizure. He tried his best to repress. "How is this my life?" he mumbled under his breath as he started to hustle Parker towards the door. The crowd was thick here, but apparently having your arm around a pregnant woman helped you cut a path through it pretty quickly.

"First time dad, huh?" said a man who was walking in the same direction. He had a comb-over, a glass of expensive brandy in his hand, and a look of pure sympathy on his face. "Good luck, son."

"Oh," Hardison said, slapping the man hard enough on the shoulder to make a little brandy slop out over the rim of his glass, "ha ha, yeah, first time for everything, am I right?"

"When are you due?" the man asked Parker. "Looks like it's any time now."

Parker was looking down at the fake swell of her belly with a greedy look on her face. "Oh, this egg should pop out any minute."

The man laughed. "Laura and I had nicknames for ours before they were born, too. Didn't want to jinx it. Got any idea for the baby's real name yet?"

Parker stared at him like he'd grown a second head. It was an expression Hardison was really, really familiar with. "I just _said_, it's called egg."

And that was another really familiar expression, the one on the guy's face—the one that said he'd found something very interesting and pressing to do, all the way on the other side of the room from Parker.

"You a freak of nature, you know that, right?"

Parker looked at him sidelong from beneath narrowed eyelids as they started down the stairs that led down to the entrance hall. "You don't say that like it's a bad thing."

Hardison snorted a little under his breath. "Girl, I gave up on thinking anything different a long time ago. Now come on, let's go hatch this egg of yours."

"Okay," Parker said, but just before they pushed through the door that led outside, she turned to him and said, "I think you're a freak of nature, too."

And then she was gone, out into the bright sunlight, and Hardison was left grinning, startled and pleased, at the door as it swung shut behind her. "Aww yeah." Freak of nature—he could work with that.


End file.
